Last Call

The major difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals want to expand voting, and have tirelessly worked over the years to do that.  Conservatives on the other hand want to limit voting to certain groups.  That tendency is arguably the most dangerous difference between the two groups, because nothing is more important to a healthy, functioning representative democracy than the act of regular voting at the local, state, and federal level.

Which is why when Jonah Goldberg jokes about conservatives "beating" sense into liberals, and that America's young people are too "stupid" be allowed to vote at all, I get a bit annoyed.

Appearing in a video published online on Thursday, Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large for the neoconservative National Review Online website, explains that he believes letting 18-year-old Americans vote is a big mistake that should be taken back.

Advocating that conservatives should “literally” beat young people into political submission, Goldberg said that young voters are “so frickin’ stupid about so many things,” which is why, in his view, the system must change.

“It is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity more than youth,” Goldberg said. “We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. And yet there’s this thing in this culture where, ‘Oh, young people are for it so it must be special.’ No, the reason young people are for it because they don’t know better. That’s why we call them young people.”

Well, most of us get over that condition.  Jonah apparently remains locked into infantile chest-beating.  Jamie Kilstein over at Citizen Radio takes him up on it and wants to have Jonah fight him for charity.  I think that's a grand idea.

He'll never do it, of course.  Conservatives get other people to fight for them.